


A Shot in the Dark

by PsychicBananaSplit



Category: Original Work
Genre: Abuse, Abuse of Authority, Aftermath of Torture, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Blood and Torture, Child Abuse, Depression, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, Heavy Angst, Hospitalization, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Suicide, Implied/Referenced Torture, Implied/Referenced Underage Drinking, Implied/Referenced Underage Relationship(s), Interviews, Kidnapping, Multi, Past Abuse, Past Torture, Physical Abuse, Psychological Torture, References to Depression, Suicide, Suicide Attempt, Torture, Underage Drinking, Underage Drug Use, Underage Kissing, Underage Smoking, my god, theres so many, um
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-03
Updated: 2019-07-03
Packaged: 2020-06-03 14:07:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,760
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19465576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PsychicBananaSplit/pseuds/PsychicBananaSplit
Summary: In the summer of 2012, ten juniors of different family lives, social lives, and backgrounds, were walking through a park after an “end of the school year” celebration. The next day, all their parents had received messages from them saying that they spontaneously decided to go to a summer camp together, when in reality, they were kidnapped by a supposed anti-government secret society that forced them into cruel, ruthless experimentation. They intended to create superheroes; instead, made eight mentally, emotionally messed up adults and two dead teenagers.





	A Shot in the Dark

**Author's Note:**

> this is my original work that i plan on publishing someday. i mean, it probably won't happen, but i can't help but hope, right?  
> anyway, if you guys have read my works, there is an original work that i previously had written with a couple of these characters in the past, but i changed up the timeline a bit.  
> anyway, this is still under heavy editing, so it might change a bit if people seem to like it and start re-reading it (i know i do that sometimes, i don't know about you).  
> this is going to be a little experiment, if you will, so i probably won't post more unless people ask for it.  
> anyway, enjoy the chap. peace out!

-11:58 AM. Sunday, August 18, 2019. Lewiston, Maine.

_Avery Smith tells her story: The True Story Behind Avery Smith’s Bestseller,_ Underground

That was the headline of a recorded interview Taylor saw on Youtube, in her recommended section. Her head spun, and her lungs burst with fury. The book was already infuriating enough. Dammit, the book was enough. _Enough._ Despicable. Outrageous. It didn’t even _really_ happen to _her._

God, that book. _It didn’t even happen to her._

If there was any chance that she could break the bones in her thumb, then she would have when she clicked the video. Out of everyone, Taylor would have never guessed that _Avery_ would be the famous writer of the group. The quietest one of the bunch. Never spoke a word outside of close friends and family. _Selective Mutism,_ she heard of. 

_“Hello, Ms. Smith. Can I call you Avery?”_

Avery brushed long, wavy, ginger hair our of her line of sight and shook her head. _“Oh, no, that’s fine! I wouldn’t mind that at all.”_ She was dawned in an elaborate, yet simple, black dress. Modestly long sleeves clung to her average frame like a second skin. _It didn’t even happen to her, goddamnit._

 _“Ok, yes, thank you, Avery. Now,”_ the camera panned back to the interviewer, and she pushed her horn-rimmed glasses up her nose obnoxiously, like a stuck-up child would. _“There have been a lot of questions from the fans, and you know how this generation can find almost anything on the internet. So, we’ve been hearing rumors of you, actually going missing in the summer of your junior year. Is that a correct assumption?”_ __ _Damn these nosy kids in the twenty-first century._

 _It didn’t even happen to her._ Avery told the obnoxious, snotty interviewer about everything. The experiments, the training. The drowning and the cutting and the kicking and the _murdering-_

She told the entire world everything.

(-:-)

-12:27 AM, May 19, 2012. Kansas City, Missouri.

_“A duck walked up to a lemonade stand! And he said to the man, running the stand! Hey! Bum bum bum!” Micah goddamnit Sparrow keeps singing “The Duck Song” at the absolute top of his voice (so it cracks every “lemonade”, “man”, and “hey”), and what makes it worse, Brooklyn, Lane and Greg are encouraging it. Lane is singing along, and:_

_“Got any grapes?!” Every. Time. But, they have had a few (probably more) drinks-courtesy of Sam’s fake ID._

_Taylor was pretty sure she was the only one that was annoyed, or at least not okay with it. She gave up on the attempts to stop their actions, and gradually fell behind the group, eventually making a good five feet from her and the rest._

_At some point, however, Jordan made his way back to where she was._

_“Wild night, isn’t it?” They both chuckled. Jordan’s hand found it’s way around her neck, leaning slightly against her and Taylor had to fight the urge to rest her head on his shoulder._

_“Sure is.” Footsteps behind them, increasing in speed and sound, were veering in their direction. She paid no mind, feeling for the indentation of her father’s pocket knife. She instantly felt a bout of regret, sadness, and distance hit her head on._

_Jordan peered to look at her, catching the desolate look on her face. “Hey, Tay?” She blinked, looked up and smiled at Jordan’s bright expression._

_“I’m fine, Jo. Just a bit tired, is all.” The footsteps didn’t start again. It was just the drinks, probably. She resumed to dolefully listen to the drone of Lane’s bass and the singsong of Micah’s alto. “Wild night.”_

_“Can anybody find me,” they sang together, drunkenly leaning against each other and waving their arms around._

_“Somebody to,” Micah drew out the high note a little, Lane giggling beside him._

_“To love, to love! To love!”_

_The footsteps behind her were louder. Coming nearer. “Guys, wait-”_

(-:-)

When Taylor finished watching the interview, she waits for a long while. For what, she doesn’t know. For a phone call? For her water bill? It doesn’t make a difference. She just sits in her dark apartment, waiting for the world to change its course, perhaps. In the words of Micah Sparrow, anyway. 

Speaking of, her phone rang after several minutes of silence, startling her. An unknown number popped up. She let it ring twice, feeling--not feeling--the vibrations, and listening to the noise before clicking the green.

_“Taylor Stewart?”_

“This is she?” _Is it them? Is it them is it them isitthemisitthem-_

 _“You were on Micah Sparrow’s emergency contact list.”_ Taylor internally sighs, then the numb falls into her head again. Then frustration. 

She said that she would be there to pick him up tomorrow morning.

(-:-)

_There had been a lot of flashing. A lot of screams. A taser or two, and her pocket knife flying through the air, away from her reaching hand. Grace went down first, Gregory with her, always. She thinks that Micah had been conscious the longest, from what he told her. He remembers one of the armed cronies kicking him in the face until he was barely alive. Sadistic monsters, he calls them. People who feed off of people’s pain and grow larger, larger and stronger along with the ability to hurt people, starting the whole cycle. Everything is a cycle, Micah claims. But, then again, he was high and in the middle of geography class when he said it. Cruelty for cruelty’s sake, he calls it. Sadism, that is._

_Taylor wonders if he was talking about sadism he was speaking from his personal experience._

(-:-) 

After the call she sort of sits there for a few more moments, fiddling with her phone, inspecting the case as if it’s so interesting. She glances at the ceiling, then the TV, then back to her phone. Then she closes her eyes and plans the rest of her evening.

She gets up from the couch at around five, cooks dinner at five thirty, eats at six, takes an hour long shower because _Goddammit she needs it,_ and she goes to bed. And, yeah, she wakes up at around three in the morning and can’t go back to sleep, so she decides to get up and make herself a cup of coffee. And yeah, she gets her keys and purse and throws some converse on (that just so happened to be previously owned by Micah) and says goodbye to the landlady at the door and she drives to the hospital that’s an hour from her house because Micah _needs her._ Even if he is problematic at some points, and even if he is just as insufferable as her, and he can be a real problem just like her, he has a bigger heart than her. He helps her just as much as she helps him. And even though it might be a little selfish, she tries and she tries to make it all better for the greater good. 

(-:-)

-6:03 AM, Monday, August 19. Ellsworth, Maine.

When she walks through the glass doors of Northern Light Maine Coast Hospital, there is a very familiar face waiting for her. Sure, he’s in a dingy light blue hospital gown, holding the clothes he was wearing before, sure, his hair is dyed into an almost blacker black than before, but yeah. It’s him. His skinny, short, shivering frame pushes past the crowding of nurses at the end of the hallway he was walking, winking at a few of them on the way. Some scoffed, or looked away in disgust. One woman blushed. A man winked back at him. 

“Well, _ch_ _é_ _rie,_ it’s my time to bid you a farewell. I’ll most likely see you again,” he adds, casually winking at the male nurse that was walking him out. “But, for the moment, goodbye.” Micah leans on the tips of his toes and kisses the nurse on the cheek, and he rolls his eyes in return.

“You still need to change, idiot. Besides,” he gets a clipboard from the front counter. “You need to stay sober, Sparrow. Or you might end up dead in an alley instead of sleeping.” Oh, it was much worse than that, she can tell. Micah is bruised, he looks beaten up. Angry red marks were marred into the flesh of his lips, above his eyes, gashed through his cheeks and hands. Horrible, ugly teeth marks on his neck. His eyes were ghastly, sunken in and surrounded in the natural state of dark indigo. Dull, that’s what she’d describe them. 

“Oh, well, darling, that wouldn’t spur a reason for me to see you, _beau._ I’ll get changed.” He smirks and rushes off to the bathroom, ducking inside.

The nurse (his name tag reads Matt) hands her the clipboard and a pen. She signs her name in all the right places, and makes sure to sign his name as well, because she knows that he will get too caught up in flirting with the nurse-Matt-to sign it himself. 

“Hey, I looked into his medical records,” Matt began, making Taylor look up from the clipboard. “Send him to rehab. He needs it.” Taylor put on a fake smile. _As if she hasn’t tried that before, huh?_

“Okay, I’ll take that in mind.” Out of her peripheral vision she could see Micah stumble out of the bathroom with the same outfit she found him in a couple months ago. Black on black on black. Purple hoodie--that isn’t his. His classic beige colored converse were stained with mud, grime and grease. She needs to buy him another pair; she knows how important they are to him. 

“You ready to go, _mon ami?”_ Micah stuck his hands into his pockets and rocked on the balls of his feet, whistling. Taylor nodded. 

“Just a second. Sit over there to wait, okay?” She didn’t want him running off, at the same time of not wanting to treat him like a child, but he surprisingly followed her order, sitting in the waiting room area. He balanced his chin on his upturned palm, looking out the window in a transfixed state. 

The paper on the clipboard listed the things that they did to treat him in the five days of withdrawal. Normal things. A feeding tube, DNA samples, etc.

She looked over to Micah in regret, wishing that she had gotten into contact with him sooner, gotten him better help. She felt sick. _Bite marks and bruises._

“Here.” She gave the clipboard back to Matt and went off to get Micah into the car.


End file.
